The Turning Of The Leaves
by Proton Star
Summary: Mystique's life is a series of sacrifices. Part 3 of the Becoming series.


Title: The Turning Of The Leaves

Author: Red Fiona

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, Marvel do. This iteration is 20th Century Fox's. No money is being made from this.

Fandom: X-Men (most particularly X-Men: First Class, but also bits of X-Men 2 and 3)

Series: Part 3 of Becoming. Part 1 can be found here - s/9557059/1/The-Mind-Is-A-Fortress-And-Life-Is-A-Siege and part 2 can be found here - s/11012804/1/All-The-Things-She-Said-Running-Through-My-Head

Characters: Mystique, Azazel, Magneto, Charles Xavier, Hank McCoy and Angel.

Pairings: Mystique/Azazel

Ratings/Warnings: PG-12. Several off-screen character deaths and the loss of a child.

Notes: I started to write this after First Class, and was trying to tie it to the previous X-Men films. And then DOFP was released so everything has been thoroughly Jossed.

Summary: Mystique s life is a series of sacrifices.

* * *

She was willing to admit that this is as much her fault as Azazel's, she'd spent so long playing men recently that she'd not thought of things like the pill.

They'd been following a lead of Erik's, about a group in Europe who were rounding up mutants to experiment on them. He'd been badly injured getting the information. The doctors said that he'd be fine, but it was a spinal injury and Mystique was getting thoroughly sick of knowing exactly how tricky those were. A spinal contusion, they'd said, and provided he had total rest, in six months, he'd be okay. Even Erik had to admit that he was in no fit state to be of use in fighting with them so he was staying at Charles's. Unfortunately he'd promised that he'd do nothing illegal while he was there. Charles, because he knew them well, also imposed an added condition that Erik couldn't aid illegal activity while he was there which meant they couldn't communicate with him until they'd eliminated the plot.

The team, such as it was, was down to her and Azazel. Emma had got sick of Erik and walked out, which caused a different set of problems than having her there had done. Riptide was dead and Angel had been injured on a mission. Some bastard had shot Angel's wings out mid-flight. Angel was alright now, but she still couldn't fly. Angel would always be wonderful, but the front-line was nowhere to be without your powers. They kept in touch through a post-box system.

So she and Azazel had become close.

Actually, that was unfair. Azazel loved her and she loved him, and it was nice that it was that uncomplicated for once.

Except it had suddenly become complicated.

Whenever she'd read stories like this in the papers, she'd assumed the women involved had been idiots or liars, but now she might have to give them a pass because life happens. She'd gone to sleep her normal size and woken up with a bump.

They'd no idea what to do. She was too far gone to be of use for the mission, and it wasn't like they had time to wait, their task was an urgent one. The other obvious option was out, one, she had no idea how far along she was so who knew what was medically doable, and secondly, this was the child of mutant parents, and there were few enough of them around to do away with another one, no matter how inconvenient.

They came up with a plan. Azazel, since he was mission ready, would go on and complete the operation. Mystique would morph into someone winsome and meek-looking and get this dealt with. They'd meet up in the Paris flat in a month and if they missed that, the fall-back rendezvous was Xavier's a month later. They could cope with Magneto's scorn.

Before he left Azazel insisted on going through this ritual of his. He'd developed it after Riptide died, a sort of credo that urged them all to carry on no matter what. Magneto disapproved of it, called it sentimental, but Mystique could understand it. She'd no idea what she would have done if anything worse had happened to Angel.

Mystique went to the local convent hospital in the person of someone much younger, a skinny little girl, ran away from home, nothing like her real self at all. The nuns did that thing, where they cared for her and disapproved of her in equal measure, and she thought that maybe, just maybe, this would all work out.

It didn't.

She'd known there was something wrong before the nun said anything. Something in the way the nun was standing, and the look in her eye.

Her son was dead, he'd been born that way.

She tried to take it all in, but the next thing she knew, Charles was there in his chair, silently explaining to the Mother Superior in word perfect German, that he was Mystique's brother and was here to take her home. She suspected that he used his telepathy for more than just translation.

They spent the flight in an awkward near silence. Because Mystique did not want to talk about it, and she could see that Charles did.

She found out why after they landed.

Charles asked her if there was anything she needed, and there wasn't, she was tired, she needed to sleep and she just wanted to be left alone, so he led her to her old bedroom.

Hank brought her some chicken soup, and she accepted it more because she knew she should be hungry rather than because she actually was.

"He doesn't know about what happened, whatever it is," Hank said as he put the soup down. "He collapsed screaming, and the only thing we could get out of him was your name. Erik made him track you down with Cerebro, because Charles wanted to give you the space you asked for." Hank paused briefly. "Charles didn't need much convincing. Just, don't hold him tracking you down against him."

Of course, Hank was still at the mansion, where else could he go? But Mystique was surprised by how little everything else had changed. Alex was apparently around but refusing to speak to anyone who wasn't Charles or Hank so Mystique didn't see him. Sean had moved in with his girlfriend in Westchester, and travelled in when he was needed. There was a time when Mystique would have teased him about all of that, but that was a long time ago, and it felt like the girl who would have done that might as well have been another person.

It didn't stop her from hitching a lift with him back to Westchester next time Sean came. She went to see a doctor, taking some medical records that she had knocked up on Charles's typewriter. Hank caught her while she was writing them, she suspected that he'd seen what she was doing, but he'd taken to determinedly not asking questions.

The doctor proved what she already knew, there was nothing wrong with her. Erik was waiting for her when she got out. At first she was scared, a completely irrational fear that Erik knew and Erik disapproved, like it mattered when what was done was done. She talked herself down. He probably followed her from the mansion, but he didn't say anything by way of explanation, just popped open the car door with his powers. He didn't ask questions on the way back either, but Erik's way of not asking questions was a lot quieter than Hank's.

She had no idea what to tell any of them, even if she could get past the wall of stone that formed and tightened in her chest every time she even got near to saying anything, and she didn't want to tell them until she'd told Azazel, because he deserved to know first.

She found herself counting down the days until he was supposed to appear, which was silly because it wouldn't make him come quicker.

Azazel didn't arrive.

Mystique fooled herself for a couple of days, pretended that there was a reason for his delay, inventing travel issues for a teleporter and things like that, but on the third day, she broke.

Azazel was as dead as their child.

It was Erik she went to for comfort. Or lack of it, he didn't pat her on the back or murmur words of comfort in her ear, because he was worse at comforting people than she was at receiving it. He let her cry herself out and didn't try to pretend that it would all get better.

The only thing that she could cling to in all this mess was that Azazel had succeeded in his mission, because they would all have known if he hadn't, so he'd died doing something worthwhile.

She suspected that Erik had guessed at least part of what was wrong, if not all of it. Hank and Charles didn't know what to do with her as she went about the house red-eyed. So they fussed. She'd never been offered so many cups of tea and coffee and she could feel their eyes boring into her every time they sat down to eat. She felt like retreating, so that's exactly what she didn't do. Always take the fight to the enemy.

She was constantly tense, itching for a fight and she didn't know if it was because she wanted to hurt someone so they would understand, or because she wanted to get hurt so everything else would go away.

She went running when she felt like that, because even though Erik would spar with her, and she could probably convince Hank to join her too, she wasn't sure she could control herself in a fight, no matter if it was a pretence.

It got better. Slowly, and in nothing like a linear progression, but eventually she felt like herself again.

Charles still thought she should talk to someone about, though he didn't say what 'it' was. That and the way he hadn't begun a stop-start conversation with her about what had happened convinced her that he'd kept his word and hadn't read her mind. Erik never asked about what had happened while he wasn't around, he'd drawn a line and moved forward. She felt like she could understand why he never answered questions about his own past. She was glad she had never asked him more than the most basic of questions, because she would have hated anyone who d pressed her on this.

She started to feel functional enough to re-join the fight, and practised harder than ever, waiting for Erik to give the signal that they were leaving. Mystique was surprised that Erik hadn't left the mansion already, Magneto was a man always on the move.

So she asked him why he hadn't.

Which was probably a mistake.

Because what he told her didn't quite add up. Erik told her that he thought he could talk Charles round, that he'd finally agree with their point of view. Mystique wasn't sure what he thought had changed, and she suspected that there was something Erik wasn't telling her. She didn t agree with the idea of staying here. There were things they did that Charles would never let them do while they were here, and they were things that needed doing.

So she left. She went to visit Angel, because if the rest of them were living off Charles's largesse, then she didn't see why Angel shouldn't.

Except Angel didn't want to. She was happy in her life, even if she had to work every hour possible to keep her home for runaway mutants together. "I don't want to owe him anything. Because he can't use me to get to you if I don't." That was Angel all over. Angel was still as hardcore as the rest of them, more really, because she hadn't run back to Charles, had never had anything from him in the first place.

Mystique stayed with Angel for a while, taking the form of some very large truckers she'd known to scare people off when necessary. But she realised she was taking up a lot of Angel's valuable time and effort, because Angel knew there was something wrong, and even if she didn't know what, and even though she wasn't pressing, Mystique knew that Angel was trying to make her feel better. And she did.

That's when she went home.

It was partly to take some stress out of Angel's life, and partly because she realised that working towards something was what was making her feel better. She'd not got the skillset to be useful to Angel, beyond funnelling money to her through so many front companies that she doubted even Hank could track them all, but she could do something to help Charles, even if she thought that what he was planning to do didn't go far enough.

Back at the mansion, she kept herself busy, helping Hank, Charles and, despite his complaints about what it could do, Erik produce another Cerebro, in the basement of the mansion.

It was interesting to see how much Erik and Charles had changed compared to how she remembered them, now that she had the mental distance needed to see it. Because you never thought that the people around you had changed until you didn't see them for a while, and then suddenly, it was there. She, and to a lesser extent Hank, didn't seem to change as much, or not as quickly, possibly a side effect of her mutation, and his attempted "cure".

Erik's hair had started to go grey before she and Azazel had left him at the mansion, but now it had turned fully. Steel grey, of course, because life liked its ironies. Charles, meanwhile, was losing his hair. She would have, back when they were the people they weren't anymore, teased him about it. Gently, so as not to hurt him, but enough to draw him out of his more melodramatic moments. Now she had no idea how to do that even though he still needed it, because she's his sister and a stranger at the same time. Hank won't say anything in case he hurt Charles, Alex went too far and Erik was keeping mysteriously quiet.

Whatever Erik was up to, and she knew he had a plan, because she recognised the satisfied look he always wore whenever he had one, he hadn't told Mystique, but she was used to playing along with his plans, and could do it without knowing the details.

It was an easier life than the one they'd had before, and she switched between enjoying it, as much as she could while always planning for the day they had to leave again, and being angry that Azazel wasn't here with them, never mind her child who could have grown up in what was close to paradise. If only if it hadn't been for that last mission, if only Erik had unbent before his injury.

If ...

She knew she couldn't keep running when she got angry like this, because she knew that one day she'd have to face it, or something worse, not that she can think of anything that could be worse, and on that day she wouldn't be able to run, so it was not a good coping mechanism. She learnt to swallow her anger, to let it burn its way down her throat, into her stomach, she saves it for later, to keep her warm in future. She hides it and anything else that could hurt her behind the wall she'd created in response to Emma's aggravations.

Slowly, Charles's dream of having a school for mutants came together.

Mystique will always remember the first girl, Jean with her lovely long hair.

Jean was the beginning of the end.

Not Jean's fault. Not Erik's either, really.

Charles didn't seem to have learned. You couldn't deny someone's powers, it wasn't right and it wouldn't make them happy in the long run.

Thankfully Jean didn't notice the arguments, or didn't seem to. Mostly she hid in Hank's basement and treated him like an overgrown blue teddy bear. Hank had no idea what to do with her so he taught her chess to keep her entertained. Mystique suspected that Jean loved Hank best because he was the only one that treated her like a child and not a cause.

Mystique knew that they were leaving almost before Erik did. She recognised the signs, she'd seen them all before. She made sure to visit Jean before they left. Neither Erik nor Charles, no matter how much they loved Jean, and everyone loves Jean, had the wit to tell her what was happening, or rather that none of it was her fault.

She knocked on Jean's door.

"Are you leaving too?"

Mystique nodded. Jean, the child psychic with a power so strong it terrified Charles didn't even try to change her mind. "It's not your fault." Mystique told her. "No matter what you might have heard," Mystique swept Jean's hair away from her temple gently tapping it on the way past, "or heard, it's not your fault. They've been having this argument since long before you were born." And Mystique knew they'd be having it till they were dead.

"If you end up agreeing with us, come find us." They weren't leaving a forwarding address, but if Jean saw it their way, she'd find them easily enough with her powers.

It was different leaving this time, possibly because she knew ahead of time that she was going. She could say goodbye properly. It was stupid and sentimental, but this was the first and the last place that was hers, and that wasn't going to be taken away from her when people noticed she was there. The life of a mutant freedom fighter was a series of increasingly sketchy motel rooms, other people's unoccupied houses and some really strange caves and caverns.

She wonders sometimes if Charles knew what he had in this house, and the stability it represented. Or maybe he didn't think about it, the way he didn't think about moving them both across an ocean to go to university.

When she closed the front door and jumped into the car with Erik, she knew she was never coming back. There were things she would miss, materially, her life would never be this easy again, and she would miss Charles, she always had done since she left the first time, but in many ways she thought that it would be easier to do what needed to be done now, because, if they'd stayed, Charles would always have held them back. She didn't just mean his objection to violence, but the way that even within his limits he won't go to the necessary extremes. What they did, she and Erik and other like-minded mutants, it was vital for the future of their species. She'd lost enough for the cause that she's willing to give this up.


End file.
